The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle)

by Catherine Webb

  ‘Please, Mister Lyle.’

  The voice and the eyes were overwhelming; he could feel his vision narrowing to a pinprick of green and heard the sound of the fire receding. There was no arguing with that voice. He staggered like a drunkard the last few paces across the room, the other Tseiqin moving out of his way. He could feel their eyes on the back of his neck as they watched him obey, kneel down at the bedside, shuddering and drawing in deep breaths. At last Lyle found himself released from the Tseiqin’s influence. His muscles ached from the strain of trying to resist. A long, cold hand, almost as white as the old man’s hair, reached out and pulled Lyle’s chin up until he stared into those green eyes once more. Lyle nearly whimpered. Of all the ways to die . . .

  . . . I’m so sorry . . .

  ‘Tell me. What do you know of the Machine?’

  ‘What Machine?’

  The green eyes narrowed; filled his world again. ‘Tell me, Horatio Lyle. Did Augustus Havelock ask you to build the Machine?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very good. Do you know where Berwick is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what the Machine is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you go to the Elwick house? Tell me the truth.’

  He felt the words rising and tried to bite down on them, but it was like trying to give up breathing. ‘Scared!’ he blurted. ‘Havelock will hurt them, he will, I know he will, he’ll hurt them and I can’t stop him, had to get Tess to safety, had to make sure Thomas was all right, had to keep them safe and . . .’

  ‘You’ve been threatened?’

  Another half-bitten-off choke of laughter scratched Lyle’s throat. ‘There are smarter questions,’ he mumbled, ‘considering the circumstances.’

  To his surprise, Old Man White smiled. Lyle felt the greenness withdraw its power, and the world swam gradually back into focus. He let his head knock against the edge of the bed while he dragged in shuddering breaths and tried to will his heartbeat out of his ears.

  At length he demanded, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Do you . . . hate me, Horatio Lyle?’

  ‘You abduct me in the middle of the night and play games with my mind . . . I admit, I have had more and better reasons to like a man.’

  ‘I apologize for that.’

  ‘Well then, that’s all right, isn’t it?! Just tell me, please, what the wicked scheme is now and get on with it. No games, no mysterious questions, please; let’s simply establish the new depth of depravity and adjust our moral senses accordingly.’

  ‘You think we are wicked?’

  ‘The precedents are not encouraging.’

  ‘But you would condemn us all? You have met Lord Moncorvo, Lady Lacebark, you have seen . . . terrible things, yes. They have threatened you, hurt you and the ones you love, and for their sins you would say that we are all evil? Have I hurt you, Mister Lyle, despite provocation? Have I raised my voice, have I told you that you must die for being what you are, have I called you my enemy? Will you really say that all the Tseiqin are wicked, for what has been done by the few you have met?’

  Lyle opened his mouth to say, ‘Well, yes, all things considered the allergy to iron doesn’t make you the happiest of housemates in this new world, and the fact that there really were a lot of you who stormed into my house, trashed most of it, murdered your way to my doorstep and pushed me off the top of a cathedral in a thunderstorm, doesn’t bode well for the collective mass, so go dip your head in quicksand, dammit!’ Instead he found himself mute, with nothing at all worth saying.

  Old Man White seemed to see this, because he smiled and let out a more relaxed, rattling breath. ‘We are not all what you think, Mister Lyle. I admit that I find the touch of iron . . . repulsive; the presence of magnetism causes me pain. And there are those among your kind who are doing terrible things to each other, to my people, to the whole world, blasting whole mountains in search of more and more iron to fuel their machines, until nothing is left but rust and soot. However, I cannot but feel that ignorance, the ignorance of your species, is not a good enough cause to condemn them all to die. I am in no hurry to be a lord, a god over your kind. I love the places outside the city; I flinch when I think of what your kind has done to them. But I also love Mozart and Beethoven and Turner and puppet shows and the buildings you make and your jokes about the Scots. Our time was centuries ago; your people are very, very young compared to ours. It is your time, your world, and has been for hundreds of years. I accept this. Perhaps, with all this considered, you can understand why there are some of us who aren’t in such a hurry to cut off your little finger, Mister Lyle.’

  Lyle’s gaze moved instinctively from Old Man White to another pair of green eyes, belonging to the only woman in the room. She smiled sweetly, head on one side, with silent laughter in her look. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking his time with each word, in case the next one brought disaster, ‘I’m just trying to clarify this. You . . . are claiming not to be evil killers intent on the destruction or enslavement of the human race.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You are, in fact, claiming to be nice Tseiqin.’ The words dripped like acid off Lyle’s tongue. ‘Concerned Tseiqin, human-liking Tseiqin, Tseiqin who, in short, would never use their demonic powers - not that we should go into that sort of thing right now, not demons at the moment, thank you - but that you are basically sweet and loving people, accepting of humankind with a paternal twist of sad, ironic appreciation of all humanity’s bumbling mistakes. Have I got the gist?’

  ‘I still detect scepticism in your tone, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘Well, I am building up to the big wheel-locker of a question.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  Lyle’s voice had the heightened squeak of a scared man trying to remain in control. ‘If all this is the case, then why oh why oh why did you decide to kidnap me! And on that matter, why didn’t you help me when your bloody people decided to muck around with the Fuyun Plate and a lot of voltage? Why didn’t you say something when Lucan Sasso was remoulding London in a not entirely pleasant image? Why don’t you do something?!’

  ‘It is your time, Mister Lyle. It is humanity’s time to do what humanity can; we do not intervene.’

  ‘Well, that’s just a bucket of dung!’ shouted Lyle. ‘I mean, for goodness’ sake, what do you expect? Of course we’re going to get things wrong; of course there’s going to be stupid bloody people doing stupid bloody things. And you just stand by, shaking your head and tutting? What in the name of all that may or may not be sacred do you expect to achieve?’

  Old Man White didn’t raise his voice, but the words stopped Lyle dead. ‘Mister Lyle, we are effectively at war with our own people. We wish to help you; we cannot. I fear that for now you will have to accept that.’

  Lyle shook his head, as if trying to move the words on from his ears and into his brain, waiting for them to settle like snowflakes and freeze into place. When he spoke again, it was very slowly, eyes fixed on some distant spot visible only to him. ‘In that case, what am I doing here?’

  ‘Ah.’ Old Man White drew a deep breath that evidently scratched and banged all the way down into his lungs. ‘That is more complicated.’

  And here is the Machine.

  The colliers have been piling coal into it now for two days without pause, working in tight shifts of four hours at the furnace, one hour’s sleep, one hour’s food, and another four hours carrying the coals again. The temperature on the floor is so high that the boots of some workers have started sticking to the ground, and some of the younger boys, employed in watching the pressure gauges and crawling under the belly of the Machine to make sure the connections are holding, have started to faint. Water has become each worker’s most precious commodity, every sip a decadence: tiny wettings of the lips in the hope that this will be enough to last until the next ration.

  Above the furnace, and beyond the gen
erators hissing and hooting, belching steam as the giant magnets spin and spin inside the coils and the pistons pump for all they’re worth, trailing thick, black grease, is the bank. To a stranger, it looks like a forest of coffin-sized tubes standing up from the ground, each one encased in thin, unpainted plaster, and some of them starting to smoke. At the foot of each coffin-like structure protrude two one-arm’s thicknesses of cabling, each running away in a different direction - one joins a river of wire headed towards the spinning coils, one veers away in another direction, through a hole in a wall composed almost entirely of wire and cable looped together, into an unseen darkness. There are nearly two hundred of these coffin-like structures across the floor, each being connected and disconnected one at a time to the spinning coils around the furnaces. At each new connection, the breakers snap with fat blue sparks. After approximately two days of firing the fuel and powering the generator, this part of the Machine’s working is nearly over, and the bank is almost charged.

  If there was one thing that Harry Lyle had taught his son, Horatio of the same name, it was always to keep an open mind. The only exception was for an obviously idiotic proposition. In this case, so Horatio had been taught, he had a choice between an almost holy duty to enlighten the ignorant, or backing away with a nod and a smile, depending on which idiot was expressing the idea, and whether they were armed. As old Mrs Milly Lyle had pointed out, if the proposition were truly idiotic and there was nowhere to run, then all you could do was smile.

  Horatio Lyle sat, drinking tea at the end of Old Man White’s bed, and tried to keep an open mind.

  ‘Do you know a man called Augustus Havelock?’ asked Old Man White.

  ‘He does,’ said the Tseiqin woman, flashing Lyle another cheerful and rather wicked smile. ‘They’re not good friends.’

  ‘What do you know of Havelock?’ persisted Old Man White.

  ‘He’s somehow involved with Berwick.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  Lyle said, sharper than he meant to, ‘Sweeping and insightful detective work.’

  ‘Delightful.’

  ‘There was a laboratory - Berwick was there.’

  ‘Where’s this laboratory?’

  ‘At this exact moment, underneath a lot of water.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Havelock was there too - after, I mean.’

  ‘“After”?’ repeated Old Man White, with a raised eyebrow and an unsympathetic face.

  ‘After the large quantity of water happened,’ Lyle explained in a voice that brooked no further argument.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He told me to stop investigating Berwick.’

  ‘I see - and he threatened the children?’

  Lyle suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which is why you went to Lord Elwick’s house.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is good, Mister Lyle. It is good because it suggests you are an enemy of our enemy, which should perhaps sway you our way even if our situation does not. It is also good because it suggests you are getting closer to Berwick. There is now something more that you need to know.’

  ‘Astound me.’

  ‘Your friend, Mr Berwick, was, until a few days ago, working for Augustus Havelock.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised.’

  ‘Let me guess - he’s been working for Havelock for . . . five months? Give or take?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You’ve got the glowing green eyes, why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘Do not trespass on our good nature too far, Mister Lyle; the matter at stake is urgent.’ There was an edge to Old Man White’s voice. This, and a ripple of movement among the Tseiqin around the room, brought full awareness back to Lyle. His skin tingled once more with the sense of danger.

  ‘His house - the servants said he was barely in for the last five months, just briefly appearing and going again. And his housekeeper - Mrs Cozens - has been there for five months and was as shifty a character as you could find. You say he’s been working for Havelock?’

  ‘Indeed - building a machine.’

  ‘What kind of machine?’

  ‘We are not sure. The science of it . . . eludes us. We know that Havelock has been attempting to build it for nearly three years; that it is costly; that he has powerful supporters, and that it is designed to destroy us.’

  ‘Right.’ Lyle rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Is that the extent of your reaction, Mister Lyle? It is the Machine; it is a monster, it will kill us all! Every Tseiqin will die!’

  ‘How? How does it work?’

  ‘We do not know.’

  ‘How do you know it exists?’

  ‘Two ways. Firstly, because we have felt its effects. Last night, a . . . a thing happened, that we cannot explain.’

  ‘A “thing”?’ Lyle’s voice dripped the polite scorn of a scientific man faced with the ignorance of others.

  ‘We do not know how to put it into your scientific terms, Mister Lyle. What I do know is that one moment I was well, and the next I felt as though I had bathed in iron filings; the thing nearly tore me to pieces. It was sensed across the whole city; every Tseiqin, every one of us, felt it, a blast like the splitting of the earth.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘No. As it came and went, there was no sign of its passage.’

  ‘Magnetism?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Erm . . . magnetic, waves . . . fields . . . look, magnetism is a force that can act over a wide area, that’s why it’s a magnetic field, it can exert itself through any material, you just need . . . well, a big enough magnet, I suppose, or a really, really, really big electrical bang. Electricity, magnetism, it’s all tied together, they operate simultaneously. You don’t need to hold a magnet to feel the force it exerts, it can act over an area . . . you’re not really interested, are you?’

  ‘We understand the basic principles of science.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lyle, straining to be tactful in the face of ignorance, ‘but if you’re talking about a . . . a wave of magnetism, I suppose, as the only thing I know of that really hurts you . . . people . . . then you’re talking about some very, very advanced science - the kind understood by almost no one but Berwick.’

  ‘You accept, then, that Berwick is involved in the construction of this Machine?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he admitted.

  ‘You accept that this Machine is real?’

  ‘I accept its possibility.’

  ‘I see you’re determined to keep an open mind.’ Old Man White smiled, a gleam in those bright, bright green eyes. ‘That’s what I respect the most about you, Horatio Lyle. It is the only thing that sets you apart from Havelock.’

  ‘Oh, you are the essence of good manners and tactful sentiment, aren’t you?’ muttered Lyle. ‘If this is all true, where’s Berwick now?’

  ‘He ran.’

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘He has vanished, he has disappeared, there was . . .’ Old Man White stopped dead in the middle of the sentence.

  ‘There was what?’

  ‘Some of our more . . . aggressive . . . brethren, reasoning that Berwick was the key to the project, attempted to remove him.’

  Lyle gave a sickly grin. ‘That’s what scholarly people might call a euphemism, isn’t it? “Removed” is a tactful way of saying, “Tried to kill him with knives and relished the task,” right?’

  ‘He survived their attempt, if that’s what concerns you.’

  ‘Let’s not go into what concerns me right now; the night isn’t long enough. What then?’

  ‘He vanished, shortly after the . . . attempt. We don’t know where, and by the actions of your friend, Mr Havelock, neither does he. He is the key, Lyle, to finishing the Machine, he is the grease that oils its gears, he is the one who can make it work, and now no one knows where he is.’

 
‘How do you know this? You said there were two things that proved the Machine’s existence - what’s the other?’

  ‘Simply, we had a spy inside the Machine’s construction.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Obviously not at the location itself. The tools you people use to make your devices - iron and steel - are painful to us; we could not venture too close. This was a spy at the Machine’s highest level of conception; one who was aware of the personnel, the leaders involved - it was he who found out about Berwick’s involvement, who prophesied that Berwick was the final piece, the one who could complete the device, that Berwick was the key to making the Machine work. Unfortunately, before he could inform us of anything else regarding the Machine, he was . . . removed from his position.’

  ‘So you had a spy, and don’t any more?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘And the spy told you about Berwick?’

  ‘Not directly, but through contacts we found out about the spy’s discovery.’

  ‘It’s sickeningly complicated, isn’t it?’ muttered Lyle.

  ‘Quite. Doubtless the spy knows more than he has passed on, either to us or to those Tseiqin whom you categorized as “angel-demon people”. Unfortunately, he is at present beyond our capacity to communicate with.’

  ‘You mean you’ve lost him.’

  ‘No, no, we know exactly where he is.’

  Lyle hissed in frustration. ‘All right, where is he?’

  ‘In a cell composed entirely of iron walls, bound with iron chains down an iron corridor constantly guarded by soldiers carrying magnets, underneath Pentonville Prison.’

  There was a long silence. Feeling that something was expected of him, Lyle said, ‘That can’t be good.’

  ‘It is certainly not conducive to our efforts.’